Battlefield Wikipedia: Editors claim Tripura CM was born in Bangladesh

KOLKATA/AGARTALA: On Sunday the chief minister of Tripura Biplab Deb cleared that he was born in India, as for the three-day online battle that was seen on his Wikipedia profile page being repeatedly changed with a set of editors claiming that he was born in Bangladesh.

After the final draft of the National Register of Citizens was released on July 30, triggering citizenship debates in Assam, Deb’s Wikipedia page turned into a battleground. A total of 37 edits were made on the page from Thursday to Saturday, which saw his place of birth alternate between Tripura Gomati district and Chandpur in Bangladesh.

The rewritings continued all through Thursday. At 6.37pm, the chief minister was called “Bangladeshi Deb” in the “Early Life” segment. This was undone two minutes later at 6.39pm. Two more minutes later, at 6.41pm, the segment read: “Biplab Deb was born on 25 November 1971. After shifting to India, he spent his childhood and school days in Tripura”.

Again, at 8.10pm, the page read: “Biplab Deb was born on 25 November 1971 in Bangladesh; later his parents migrated to India as refugees from Bangladesh in 1971”. Finally, at 9.33pm, Wikipedia protected the page citing “persistent disruptive editing”.

However, changes kept being made to Deb’s place of birth on Friday and Saturday. When last checked on Sunday night, the page said he was born in Tripura.

The edits did not escape Deb’s attention. “We were aware of the vandalism on Thursday itself. The chief minister’s father, Haradhan, registered himself as a citizen under the Citizenship Act of 1955 on June 27, 1967, as a resident of Udaipur in Tripura,” said Sanjay Mishra, Deb’s media adviser.